Australian researchers have examined mitochondrial DNA preserved in chicken bones from archaeological sites in Europe, Thailand, the Pacific, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and Spanish colonial sites in Florida, and determined that they all shared an ancient ancestor. “All of our domestic chickens are descended from a few hens that I like to think of as the ‘great, great grandmothers’ of the chicken world,” said Alison Storey of the University of New England. Chickens were domesticated at least 5,400 years ago, somewhere in Southeast Asia, and because chickens do not fly or swim, they would have had to migrate with people.

Ten fragments of terra cotta Nok statues have been returned to Nigeria. Alerted by French customs officials, seven of the artifacts were seized from a shipment at a New York airport. “From what we know the items were stolen from the national museum in Nigeria. There is no report of the items being stolen so now the director-general of the Nigerian museum and antiquities is now being subjected to an investigation,” said Nigeria’s Consul General Habib Baba Habu. Two other Nok figurines and a carved ivory tusk were also handed over to Habu. They were seized in Chicago.

An estimated 160 heritage sites have been damaged by flooding in the Beijing area. Landslides south of the city damaged the Peking Man World Heritage Site at Zhoukoudian, and the museum at the site was flooded, but reports indicate that the major exhibits are safe. “If the rock stratum collapses, it would lose its value for archaeology,” said Zhang Shuangquan of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In Northern Ireland, archaeologists are working quickly to excavate a medieval site on an artificial island known as a crannog. “We’ve found human remains. This was a burial elsewhere that had been removed and for some reason brought to this site and re-buried on the crannog,” said archaeologist Declan Hurl. They’ve also uncovered a fine comb made of bone, a sharp metal blade, a leather shoe, and Bronze Age arrowheads. The site will be demolished for the construction of a new road.

Frederick H. Hanselmann of Texas State University has returned to Panama, where he and a team of archaeologists have recovered artifacts from a seventeenth-century shipwreck thought to have belonged to Captain Henry Morgan. A sword, chests, wooden barrels, and cargo seals will all be examined to see if they offer any clues to the identification of the ship. In 1670, Morgan turned his fleet of ships toward Panama City, but they ran aground on the Lajas Reef. Morgan was still able to defeat Fort San Lorenzo and take Panama City. “Morgan was one of the most infamous privateers of all time, so for me, this is a chance to use archaeological research to bridge the gap between science and pop culture,” said Hanselmann.

A court in Pakistan has given custody of the hundreds of Gandhara artifacts seized from smugglers to the provincial Sindh archaeology department. Qasim Ali Qasim, head of the department, had requested the transfer.

This article from France 24 is an overview of what is known about the threats to Syria’s cultural heritage from the continued heavy fighting. “But it’s really difficult to know what’s happening for two reasons—one, we can’t go in there and two, people inside Syria are afraid to talk on the phone,” said Mathilde Gellin of the Centre National de la Recherce Scientifique.

This entry was posted by Jessica E. Saraceni on Friday, July 27, 2012. Discussion of this blog entry is now closed.

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